Scott Brown felt like the Grinch at Christmas on the night of May 19, 2011.

True North’s senior director of corporate communications was the man responsible for putting a bit of a damper on the party that took over Winnipeg after word leaked that the city was getting an NHL team for the second time.

“My first reaction wasn’t one of panic or needing to find out what was going on, because I was confident that I did know what was going on,” Brown said.

Brown was sitting at his desk in the bowels of MTS Centre when Stephen Brunt’s Globe and Mail report broke. True North chairman Mark Chipman had decided well before that night that Brown would be in the inner circle of information, so Brown was aware of the status of negotiations with the Atlanta Spirit group. He knew a deal wasn’t done.

“It wasn’t done done, and there was a possibility that there would be nothing done, even after Stephen had reported that,” Brown said. “There were still areas that needed to be solved in the agreement, and there were significant areas.”

So while people were partying and playing road hockey at Portage and Main, Brown was busy sending out denials to inquiring media outlets from all over North America. To more than a few anonymous Internet commenters, Brown was pure evil for suggesting a deal wasn’t done.

“I was the Grinch at Christmas, kind of telling people that this wasn’t happening, and everybody else wasn’t listening,” said Brown, who can laugh about it a year later. “I was being called names and being told I clearly didn’t know what was going on.”

Chipman, meanwhile, was no doubt perturbed after spending years doing a masterful job of keeping a lid on his negotiations to purchase an NHL team.

Chipman likes to tell the story of how he drove through Portage and Main that night while on the phone with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who loves discretion and was wondering why the news had leaked. Chipman even held his phone out the window to the commissioner could hear Winnipeg hockey fans celebrating the news.

“It did create some tension between the two of them — for not very long — but it obviously didn’t please the NHL front office, for sure,” Brown said. “It caused the NHL to question our ability to (have confidential negotiations) for a brief period of time.”

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